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A pile of dry leaves, a few red ones on a tree and the cool under-current on a sunny summer day and my Ontario friend couldn’t help himself.

“Aaahhh,” he smiled. “Have I ever told you that fall’s my favourite season?”

Yes. Every year for the years I’ve known him and many times during his favourite season, I’ve heard that same thing.

Given half a chance, he’ll go on about raking up brightly coloured leaves into piles and jumping in them. He’ll reminisce about finding huge, brilliantly red maple leaves and pressing them in books. He’ll go on and on about the cool undercurrent in the air, which is such a relief after the summer’s heat.

Which is great, except I dislike autumn and its portent of long, soggy, grey days ahead.

But mostly, I dislike fall because I lament summer’s end.

I love the long hours of sunlight. I love not having to wear shoes. I love not having to pile on sweaters, coats, scarves and mitts and grabbing an umbrella before I go out the door.

Summer is the season of my dreams and has been since I was a child growing up in Saskatchewan.

For me, summer and the beach are inseparable. The beach is where I spent almost every summer day from before I can remember until I was in my late teens.

As a child, the season’s holy grail was the next in the long line of Red Cross swimming badges until I reached my goal of finally being able to teach other little kids how to swim and make sure they were safe from my perch in the lifeguard’s chair.

I went back to that Saskatchewan beach on a weekday morning this summer. I sat on a bench in the shade with my favourite cousin and my mother on the day after her birthday. We were struck by the timelessness of it all.

My photo taken this summer of the mothers with their children converted to black-and-white is almost indistinguishable from the images Mom captured years ago on her old Brownie.

As we sat and ate gigantic ice cream cones, we wondered whether some of them weren’t the daughters, granddaughters and even great-grandchildren of people we’d known back in the day.

It’s like that in cottage country, the passing down to the next generation.

But the scene at Katepwa Beach — the beach of my childhood — is little different from another at Spanish Banks a few weeks later.

Beaches are magical places where crocodiles are imagined and formed out of sand; where castles are built for princesses; and moats are dug and painstakingly filled after many trips back and forth to the water’s edge.

Beaches are where each stone is a potential treasure or the best one ever for skipping.

There’s almost always someone at the beach who is begging to be buried or begging Dad to “let me bury you.” It’s an odd ritual.

Each discovery brings squeals and shrieks of delight as do the occasional rogue wave.

But there’s no shushing here. At the beach, it’s okay to do just about anything except throw seaweed at your brother.

Summer is the smell of vinegar on french fries and the sticky sweetness of Popsicles, whose sticks can be woven into tiny rafts or turned into castle flagpoles or bridges over moats.

There’s no need for fancy toys or even fancy clothes. The joy at the beach is imagining, creating, running, swimming, playing and even dancing for the sheer fun of it.

It’s where kids transform into almost anything from sharks to queens to ninjas and a simple kite can send even adults soaring.

Summer is about picnics and barbecues; simple food preferably fresh from the garden or just caught from the sea.

But the real gift of summer is time. Not only are the days longer, the heat seems to slow minutes and hours in time.

It’s the time of the year when it seems there’s time enough to play, laugh, think, read junky novels and engage in slow, desultory conversation with friends who you don’t see enough during the rest of the year.

Yet once again, summer seems to have been too brief. So, I’ll try to appreciate the wonders of autumn and the harvest’s bounty.

I’ll pull out my sweaters and curl up on the couch … and plan my winter escape to the sun.

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